Western New York will celebrate its first STORYBOOK WINDOW WALK event in the village of East Aurora, on September 18. Like the famed holiday storybook windows on Manhattan’s 5th Avenue, storefronts from Pine Street to Elm Street will showcase the original paintings and text from the pages of THE SCARIEST DREAM EVER…”

From fables to fairies to fire trucks, a bounty of books for young readers

Buffalo News – Buffalo,NY

Local author Maria T. DiVencenzo, who wrote novels about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s mother for HarperCollins’ Little House series, offers a sweet story about the real meaning of Christmas in The Star of Christmas ($16.99, Winterlake Press, a local publishing company she founded with her husband, Peter Janzow) with luminous watercolors by Elaine S. Verstraete. More…

On Target Host Penny Wolfgang interviews Maria DiVencenzo and Peter Janzow, two of Buffalo’s “rising stars,” about their return to Western New York, Winterlake Press, the children’s book publisher they co-founded, the risks and rewards of starting a new business in this economy, and their first publication, The Star of Christmas, a children’s Christmas picture book now in bookstores.

A chance meeting at a trade show brought illustrator Elaine S. Verstraete of Middlesex together with children’s book author Maria T. DiVencenzo. Over coffee, the two started collaborating on a Christmas book DiVencenzo had begun writing almost two decades earlier.

Two years later, The Star of Christmas, a lavishly illustrated children’s book, has received a Moonbeam Children’s Book Award and high praise from the likes of novelist Anne Rice, who offers this endorsement on the cover of the upcoming second printing: “a simply told tale that provides a profound insight into the ancient and sacred meaning of the holiday itself.”

[Link: Sorry, this story is no longer available from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

Maria DiVencenzo and Peter Janzow have rolled the dice several times over the years.

But in two decades, no gamble matched the long shot the married couple is taking now: leaving New York City, the center of the book trade, to start a publishing company in Western New York in the midst of an industry upheaval – and about two years before the worst global recession in 70 years. More…

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